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Frederic Chopin: Pianists
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Chopin is saying "Ça c'est le jeu de 'Listz'! Il n'en faut pas pour accompagner la voix" ("That's the 'Listz' [sic] style of playing! That shouldn't be used when accompanying the voice"). Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), a well-known singer and sister of the legendary diva Maria Malibran, was already a professional pianist when she met Chopin in 1840. He did not give her formal lessons, but played and discussed a wide range of music with her.
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Chopin was not a conductor, or a writer on music, or a great teacher - although he earned substantial amounts from his teaching - nor did he concertize extensively. Indeed, he represents the curious phenomenon of a legendary pianist who gave approximately 30 public performances in his entire lifetime. From all reports, his playing was extraordinary: quiet, controlled, exquisitely shaded, varying from pianissimo to mezzo forte with only a very occasional forte.
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Chopin's fingers were tiny, delicate, shiny, and metallic. Yet, even with such small hands, young Frédéric sure could get around the keyboard. His music is a flurry of notes, like a whirlwind, flying from bottom to top and back again. His music is warm, romantic, and tender; in a typical Chopin recording, you don't often hear the sounds of agony and pain (except possibly from the pianist).
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The music of Frédéric Chopin is, in many ways, a record of Chopin the pianist. All of his music is either for solo piano, or places the piano in an important role. As a performer, he was known for his improvisational ability, and his compositions are often the result of these performances.
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Copyright on Chopin's music expired for England in 1856, for France in 1859, and for Germany in 1869. Not long after these dates, a variety of publishers, eager to profit from Chopin's continuing popularity, hired well-known pianists to edit his music for contemporary performers. Pianists of the later nineteenth century expected many details of expression to be explicit in the music, so these performer-editors added phrasings, dynamics, articulations, and fingerings that were absent in the editions supervised by Chopin.
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In 1836 Chopin fell in love with a 16 year old pianist called Maria Wodzinska. They became engaged, but Chopin fell desperately ill with a bronchial infection and the marriage plans had to be shelved.
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